@AldebaranDevs said:
1. Would it be possible?
Sure!
Godot has some really useful and easy to use UI/GUI nodes that make complex interactions between elements much easier than in other engines.
Making a 3D design may be a little harder depending on you go about it, but it should be entirely doable! I do not see any reason why it would not be possible.
Well, I should mention that I have a bias towards using Godot. I like Godot and think it has a lot of potential for all sorts of apps/games. That said, here's my thoughts on it:
###Pros
-| GDScript is fun to use and easy to pick up. The syntax is very similar to Python, with a few minor differences. There is also C# support, and other programming languages are supported by the community.
-| Godot has lots of really powerful and useful UI/GUI nodes. I would say Godot has the best GUI/UI interaction of any of the game engines I have used (Unity, Pygame, ImpactJS, Unreal, Haxe Flixel).
-| Godot is much smaller and less 'heavy' than other game engines. The exported binaries will be larger than using something like HTML5 or using a few project specific libraries, but Godot has a ton of functionality in a small package.
-| Godot's 3D engine is quite powerful and easy to work with. Godot 3.0 had a complete 3D engine rewrite and it's much, much better than it was before. Godot's 2D engine is one of the most powerful I have seen, but I primarily use the 3D side of Godot.
-| Godot's documentation is pretty good, and the community (on a whole) is very helpful and nice.
-| GUI/UI elements will not look native, but that could be considered a pro or a con. I think it's a pro, as it gives a unified look, but some people like their programs to have a more native look.
###Cons
-| You cannot load resources outside of the project or the user directory. This may or may not be a problem depending on how you structure saving/loading and how you structure your app.
I think you can load JSON and XML files anywhere, but loading resources like mesh files (.obj, .dae), image files (.png, jpg), or sound files (.wav, .ogg) can only be done within the project directory (res://) or in the user directory (user://, which for Windows in in appdata). This may or may not be a problem for you, but it's something to keep in mind.
-| Godot's performance is not quite as good as other game engines (like Unity). This would not be a problem with your app, and for 90% of projects Godot has more than enough performance, but for complex projects with lots of objects (especially for 3D) you may need to optimize earlier than you would have to in other game engines like Unity.
I should mention that in the 2-3 years I have been using Godot, I have only hit performance problems a couple times, and in both cases I was able to work around it and make it where my computer could maintain a stable 60+ FPS.
It's just something to keep in mind.
-| Sometimes Godot has platform specific issues. Most of the time these issues are pretty minor and are easily work around able, but they do pop up from time to time. This is not exclusive to Godot, in fact every game engine has this problem (really software in general has this problem).
If you were using a select few libraries instead of a game engine, you may not have as many platform specific issues, but you lose a lot of the additional power and functionality Godot provides. As with the performance issue, it's just something to keep in mind.
###Verdict
I think Godot would be a great choice for making a mind map app! :smile:
I would definitely suggest using Godot if you are new to programming and/or do not want to find a bunch of libraries for the various things your project will need (like UI libraries and file system libraries for example). Using Godot removes having to find the libraries, interface with them, and try to write code that binds them together to make a finished app.
